Accidental format pf backup drive

[pilgrim365]

So, i've done something really stupid. In the process of migrating my data from my old hard drive to a new one in a new windows 8.1 unit. I thought it was a good idea to create a recovery USB for windows 8 with stick I have. However by error I accidentally chose my 4tb external drive as the destination which was attached at the time. I noticed my error quickly and cancelled the process, but of course the damage was done.

Before the error I had the drive partitioned with 500gb NTFS, and the remaining FAT32. It's the FAT32 3tb ish segment I want to attempt recovery of. The drive now shows a 32gb recovery partition and the remaining as unallocated. In fact, only 250mb of info was written before I cancelled the process.

I've tried a few programs: Recuva, but this only lets me search the 32gb partition which is no use to me, unless I'm missing something. Paragon rescue kit, to attempt lost partition recovery, but this yielded no results, and also I have a registered version of Getdataback for FAT (got this a couple of years ago in another recovery process, which was then successful) which when scanning the file names all show giving me some hope, but then 14 hours later when the results came in, it only found some scattered files, with randomly generated file names.

Can someone please advise best practice for this? I thought as only 250mb was actually written I'd basically lose nothing. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Software like Recuva can only recover accidentally deleted files from an existing partition.

It's Partition Recovery software you need in your case, but as you've already tried that (Paragon Rescue) I doubt anything else will work, but you could try this: http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

From your post it seems that the data you're trying to recover exists (or existed) on that drive only.
Saving important data to a single drive is asking for trouble, especially when the drive in question is an external one (typically less reliable than internal drives).

 

[pilgrim365]

Ok, just so everyone knows. I also tried out Minitool's Power Data Recovery, which was unsucessful in finding anything of value. But then, I tried GetData's Recover My Files, and this found EVERYTHING, it discovered the lost partition, restored file names exactly as they were, the only thing that was lost (which I assume was because it was overwritten) was the directory structure I had. Brilliant little program

 

[Estella6o]

Yeah, in your case, without drive data backups left, some drive data recovery software really works in helping restore lsot files. There are still many other choices, except Recuva.
Therefore, simply select one according to your needs carefully.
Note: Never format drive without data backups again.
Check this searched thread to get some more clues of data recovery:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/294029-32-recover-formatted-video-card